Page 25 of Lethal Abduction

“It’s one shipment, Abby.” Nico, pupils dilated from the increasing amounts of cocaine he’s been ingesting. “All we have to do is steal it from Rodrigo Cardeñas and deliver it to Jacey. He’ll give us enough cash to take care of my debt.”

“Steal from the cartel?” Fear crawling down my spine. “Are you crazy? And Jacey is a psycho, Nico. You said it yourself. Even the triads are terrified of him. You know what happened to Lucky after she saw his face...”

My mother’s eyes rest on me with unsettling scrutiny. “How long were you and Nicholas together?”

“Almost two years.”

Two years of being a blind fool who still believed that deep down all men were good, just like my daddy.

God, I was a fucking idiot.

I twist the wineglass compulsively, memories tumbling through my mind in a sea of shame and regret.

“You want to cheat them both?” I stare at Nico like I’m seeing him for the first time. “Run away in a stolen yacht, loaded with the cartel’s cocaine and a bag of the psycho kingpin’s money? Are you fucking crazy? Do you even know how to sail a yacht?”

Nico, sullen and angry, facing me across the hostel room. “You said it yourself: Jacey will kill us as soon as we deliver tonight. And if we stay here, the cartel will. This is our chance. The shipment is sitting in the yacht. We can be offshore before Jacey or the cartel work out what we’ve done.”

I inhale sharply, trying to push the memory away, and turn to find Mum staring at me with a little too much understanding.

“So it was good at the start,” she says quietly. “But later... not so much?”

“No.” I swallow a large mouthful of wine, studiously avoiding my mother’s eyes. “Later, not so much.”

I can feel her scrutiny like tiny thorns on my skin. Her silence is almost worse than her condemnation.

Although, if Mum knew just how bad it really became, she wouldn’t bother condemning me.

She’d just turn away in disgust.

“What did you do, Abby?” Nico slamming me into the wall of our Bogotá hostel, his eyes bloodshot and crazy. “Where’s the yacht?” His fist, crashing into my face hard enough to split my lip. “Where’s my money?”

“Gone.” Staring straight back at him, adrenaline and anger coursing through me. “Like I will be as soon as you let me go. I won’t be part of this, Nico.”

I shiver despite the fierce heat of the late afternoon.

“Relationships can be hard when you’re young.” Mum gives me a sympathetic look. “Sometimes you don’t see who a person really is until you’re under pressure.”

I give a choked laugh. “I guess that’s true.”

“It’s her fault!” Nico sniveling, blood dripping from his lip as he faces Rodrigo Cardeñas in our hostel. “It was Abby who stole the yacht!”

Rodrigo’s face close to mine, his cigar pressing against my flesh, his insidious voice in my ear. “Talk. Or I’ll let my men fuck you until you do.”

Then a commotion downstairs, the rat cunning on Rodrigo’s face as he backs out the door with his men: “I’ll be back, puta. This isn’t over.”

I stare out over the paddocks, my knuckles white around the stem of my wineglass.

“And then?” Mum bends over to pat one of the dogs, for all as if we’re just making polite conversation. “How did you and Nico break up?”

A single shot.

Nico’s blood spreading across the floor of the hostel room.

I drain my glass in a long swallow, still avoiding her eyes. “We wanted different things, I guess.”

Cold eyes, seen through a crack in the closet doors. Eyes that scour the room, looking for me.

A second bullet, this one splintering the closet door right next to my face.

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